Welcome to Twenty-Four Hours, issue seven. This roughly falls at the ten-year anniversary mark for this thing. Unreal. Aside from my marriage, I’ve never been able to sustain anything for ten years. Although, I almost spent ten years in college… But that’s another story. I have to say, when I started this thing, I didn’t think it would go the direction it did. That is, get so serious. It happens to the best of us. Now is the part where I say something literary and corny like: This publication is essential to the vitality of American letters… or, this publication is consistently harrowing and hilarious… and that it contains interviews with some of our finest writers. All of that is true, of course, but I would rather say it like this: Dig in, folks. We got some good stuff in here. Mangia!- Josh Medsker “Literature”
Annie LaGanga
Annie laGanga Boice-Terrel Allen “Reviews” Zinesters Guide to NYC “Culture” Last Meals Project “Zines (etc)” Shannon Wheeler Aaron Cometbus
Annie and I have known each other for many years. We met at a writing workshop, run by our friend Amanda Ward, in Austin--and then with some other writer friends, started up our own workshop/writing group. I was always so jealous of her "blood and guts" style, you know, laying everything out on the table with no excuses.
We lost touch for a while, then I found out she published a memoir in prose-poems--Stoners and Self-Appointed Saints (Red Hen 5 tips on Writing Press)--and was having a book signing in Manhattan. I met AnPowerful Short Mem- nie and her partner Bill Cotter (an awesome author in his own oir right), and later, did this interview with her. Her writing has always inspired me to be more probing and brutally honest in my joshmedsker(at) own work. She's not only my friend, she's a hero. Thanks Annie. gmail(dot)com “How To”
Twentyfhourszine (dot)blogspot(dot) com thanks to no one (but
Interview by Josh Medsker
Hey Annie! How did you come up with the idea of prose poleigh) ems for Stoners?
I've had a terrible time over the years figuring out what exactly to call my writing, or at least the kind of writing that is in Stoners. I think it's prose poetry, I don't know if it is. Some of the pieces are for real poems and some are more like short short stories, narrative nonfiction, and some are monologues and some are I don't know what. In the end, we decided to call the book a memoir in part to get better sales and in part, I think, because we didn't know how to classify it. At one point my editor, Kate Gale, said to me, "This is not poetry." Tell me about the process of starting Stoners. Did the finished product end up the way you originally envisioned it? I wrote a few of the pieces in Stoners almost ten years ago and then I had all this writing lying around my house driving me crazy because I didn't know what to do with it. I also got into this weird little writing ritual where I would set the egg timer for fifteen minutes and do a collage and then set it for fifteen minutes again and just sit and look at the collage and then set it for fifteen and write with my right hand and then set it for another fifteen and write with my left hand. Very OCD and weird, I know, but while I was doing it, I generated a lot of stuff I liked. A lot of that writing went into Stoners. Around the same time that I was doing the fifteen minute thing, I was trying to do stand up comedy and hating it and feeling awful and my fifteen minute writing was not generating night club jokes, it was generating darkly funny but mainly sad stuff about my life, so I felt horrible about everything. I hired a career coach lady, Ann Daly, and started working with her in hopes that she would help me figure out what the fuck I should do with my life since making collages and writing about death was not helping me create a successful career as a comedian. We worked together for about a year and a half and at one point near my birthday in October, I was having this crisis because I was doing lots of other things besides writing and it finally dawned on me that if I wasn't working on a writing project of some kind, I was totally wasting my life, shirking my responsibility to myself. I told Ann this and she said, "Well what do you want to do?" and I said, "Write a book," and she said, "Okay. When will it be finished?" I said, "The end of the year." She said, "Great. December 31st, I want to see this book." Thank god Ann terrified me and I knew I had to come up with something or she'd kill me. I think I ended up making a collage of a book --- I took all the stuff I had and shaped it into something sort of cohesive, a story of myself and the people I've known. Was it difficult to write about your life in such a visceral and direct way? You talk about some intense stuff. (You can get into it as little or much as you want) For awhile it was difficult to even think about some of the stuff in my book. It hurt for a long time and I think that's why I wasn't able to write about it until a couple of years ago, until I was in my late thirties and had had a lot of therapy and recovery. But also I have to say that I lied about my life for a long time and so to be able to just say what it was like, to be direct, specific and truthful felt good, felt like a relief.
And what made you choose memoir? Did you experiment with other styles before deciding on memoir? Like I said before, memoir was just what we decided to call this thing, this collection of my weird work. I've always written about myself, my life. I've kept a diary forever but I've tried to write all kinds of stuff. I wrote a pretty bad murder mystery last summer. How did you get hooked up with Red Hen Press? Red Hen Press was started in Northridge, CA around fifteen years ago and my best friend at the time worked as a cashier at a big grocery store in Northridge where Kate Gale did her shopping. Kate told my friend that she was starting a publishing company and my friend said, "My best friend is a great writer!" and Kate gave my friend her address and told her to have me send something. I did. I sent the piece Tandoori Chicken and Kate put it in an anthology called, Blue Cathedral. I think it was in 1998. Kate and Mark E. Cull were very nice to me and I always knew that if I ever finished anything that they would look at it. When I finished Stoners manuscript on December 31 so my coach wouldn't kill me, I immediately sent Kate an email with a sample piece and she wrote back right away and told me to send the manuscript to her house. Two weeks later she sent me an email that said, "I love this little book." I know I was extremely lucky. Not lucky, extremely talented. :) What’s next for you on the writing front? So weird! I'm going back to working on stand up comedy! Thanks so much for asking! www.annielaganga.com Zinester’s Guide to NYC—by Ayun Halliday (Microcosm Books)
Ayun Halliday (East Village Inky) put together this alternative travel guide, for locals and non-locals. Ayun and other NYC-area zinesters, like Margo Dabaie (The Hookah Girl), Andria Alefhi (We’ll Never Have Paris), and Josh Saitz (Negative Capability) weigh in on their favorite things from their favorite neighborhoods—cheesecake in Astoria, fries in Manhattan, cheap photocopies in Bklyn… essentially whatever sights, sounds, foods, dives might be interesting or helpful for zinesters, hipsters, hip kids, and older hip un-kids. Microcosm also put out a zinester’s guide to Portland, which I’m told is pretty awesome. There are drawings in the book too, and so many little tidbits, you might miss some unless you read closely. (jm)
Boice-Terrel Allen is a singer/songwriter and author, originally from Pittsburgh. He has lived here in New York City for a few years now, and I had the pleasure of working with and befriending him at Barnes and Noble. His songs are tuneful and literary alt-pop (go figure!) and his stories are filled with poetic description and slow-building characterization. Watch this one. Interview by Josh Medsker When did you begin your writing career? And what is Rattlecat? I've seen that on your record, and on your books. What has been the book people have been the most responsive to? My first book, The Daughters of a Mother, was released in 2000, but I’d been writing many years before then. As a child, I wrote poetry or usually more often I would make up new lyrics to my favorite songs. So I suppose it was a foregone conclusion I would make my own music. But one of my favorite artists to invent lyrics for was Duran Duran. Their lyrics made absolutely no sense and my own words were equally absurd—but I was a child and Simon LeBon wasn’t, so that’s my defense. Officially, my writing career started with an unpublished novel that was a fictionalized account of my late grandmother’s life in North Carolina and her eventual move to Pittsburgh-my hometown. Although my heart was in the right place-it was meant as a tribute-the actual writing was clichéd and hackneyed. Like so many writers on their road to a first book, I’d read endless, pointless how-to books parceling out gems like there should be plenty of white space on a page because readers like dialogue. And I actually believed this shit! The origin of Rattlecat? It came from a story idea that was never used. A young boy created an imaginary creature, part snake/part cat that would protect him. I didn’t write the story, this was some time in ’98 I believe, but I liked the name. I liked it so much I decided to use it as the name of my publishing—and now music—imprint, plus I thought it made for a cool logo. I would say my second book, Janet Hurst, has received the most response, it’s also my favorite. It’s about a middle-aged woman who never followed her dream to writing a novel. I viewed it as a cautionary tale. I think people connected to the story because they could insert themselves into the character because many people don’t act on their goals, passions, etc. for multiple reasons. It’s still my favorite book because it was when I found my voice as a writer. I also felt I achieved a certain mood of melancholy without sentimentality but with an undercurrent of humor.
Your newest book (half of it) is called "Stories Going Steady"--a Buzzcocks reference, yes? And you have a split focus on music. Does it distract you? I have my own personal theories about that. I think it's benficial. You? Despite writing books for ten years, my true passion is music. So for me, combining the two felt quite natural. It’s funny though because people who knew me before I started making music would ask me if I’d stopped writing books, which seems ridiculous to me to be limited to one medium. For classification, I suppose you can say I’m an author and musician, but I prefer artist because it holds more room to grow. You have mentioned Elvis Costello as an inspiration to your music—what did you say? "Elvis Costello puts Morrissey in a headlock". Is that right? What about for your books? Actually the phrase is, sounds like Elvis Costello serenading Paul McCartney on a blind date set up by Morrissey, so the love could be spread to all. It’s about strong melodies for me. As a music listener, I’ve always been drawn songs that have strong hooks and stick in your ear after the first listen. And if you’ve got great lyrics, too, well, you can’t beat my influences. I’ve been working on the album [How to be an Adult] for three years and haven’t written any new fiction during that time, so maybe I was distracted. But only partially because I couldn’t help but bring everything I learned in writing books to my lyrics. There are story songs, songs with characterization, that type of thing. Which is one of the reasons why I admire someone like Elvis Costello who grafts witty, smart words to catchy pop music. That you don’t have to dumb down or pander in what you say because a song is catchy or you have to rhyme. As for books, I tend to favor writers who are more concerned with language and character as opposed to heavy plotting. This would include Gayl Jones, Alice Munro and to a lesser extent Jamaica Kincaid. After the unpublished novel, it was Jones and Kincaid who taught me that you didn’t need white space on a page-in fact so much of their writing was interior monologues. So for The Daughters of a Mother and Janet Hurst, I was interested in occupying a character’s head through first person-for the entire book, in a style that was as if they were sitting across a table from you and sharing their lives, their deepest thoughts and musings. This was more or less how I continued for the Screwball Comedy half of Screwball Comedy/Stories Going Steady. For Stories Going Steady, Munro was a strong influence for many of the short stories. I learned from her that a short story didn’t have to be about one particular moment or event with an ironic twist at the end or some epiphany, instead she showed me a short story could contain all the depth of a novel. That it could do everything a novel does. The lesson for me from Munro was to primarily take my time, that there was no need to rush to a point.
Going further with the Elvis Costello... I recently read on the Associated Press wire (May 2010), that he cancelled his tour dates in Israel in protest of the Israelis' treatment of the Palestinians. And he was reamed out by their government, and some of his fans. One of his fans said something to the effect of "he shouldn't be sticking his nose in here, he doesn't know what he's talking about. He should stick to what he knows, which is music." What do you think about that statement? That we should let the politicians make the political statements and leave the art to the artists? I never understood the argument that somehow a musician, actor, whatever is not supposed to have a political opinion outside of their medium or that the opinion is suspect. I was under the impression that an opinion is simply someone's personal view. That neither makes it wrong nor right. facebook.com/boiceonline myspace.com/boicerocks
JONATHON
KAMBOURIS’s
LAST MEALS PROJECT Jonathon Kambouris is a Brooklyn-based photographer. His Last Meals Project documents the final meals of prisoners on Death Row. Interview by Josh Medsker 24hrs: What was the impetus for this project? Jonathon Kambouris: On the morning of June 12th, 2001, I read an article in the local paper about the execution of Timothy McVeigh. I had just finished my first year of college and was at home in Michigan for the summer. The story spoke of the build up to the execution and described his final moments and last meal. When I read that Timothy McVeigh chose two pints of mint chocolate chip ice cream as his last meal, it immediately sent a shiver down my spine and left a lasting effect on me. This man masterminded such an awful, devastating and completely unspeakable act, but after reading what his last meal was, I wanted to know more. There is a very deep fascination with the mind of a killer. It’s like looking at a car accident, we don’t want to look but we always do. Our eyes examine and take in as much information as we can when we drive past. Many people share this
same desire to learn more about a killer, through books, articles, tv shows and movies. I did not start shooting this project until 2006, but that day in June 2001 was really when the project started for me. The last meal is the last choice one can make before being put to death. Because of the extreme importance of this ritual, this choice of a last meal is unarguably honest and true. This is the inspiration behind the Last Meals Project. 24hrs: Do you watch a lot of cop shows and forensic shows? my wife and I talk about this all the time, about how it’s deeply satisfying that the perp gets caught at the end of every episode, no matter how fucked up the situation is. Although, there are those few choice episodes where he/she gets away. More like real life, I guess... JK: I really enjoy watching Unsolved Mysterious/48 Hours. On two occasions (recently), I was watching and the episodes happened to be about convicted killers who I included in my project. It was quite strange because I became so familiar with their mugshot and their face after the many years creating this body of work that they became close to me. I got to know them in a weird sort of a way. It was like seeing an old friend on tv and you are like oh my god that is so and so. Not that I consider these convicted killers friends by any means, but by being so immersed in this project, it is crazy to see the same faces on some random tv program. I quickly became aware and realized that this is real; this is an actual person who was convicted of a horrific crime and is now dead. This is what makes the project so intriguing, this is an ongoing ritual and as long as the death penalty exists, I will be interested in continuing this project. 24hrs: Do you have a background in criminal justice? JK: I do not have a background in criminal justice, although, I am very interested and fascinated with forensics. I think it is such an extraordinary field and aspects of it must be so intense. 24hrs: Don’t know if I am reading too much into the project, but when I saw the pictures of the food, I don't know why, but it seemed to give back a little humanity to these people. Was that your intent? JK: People often say that or ask that. I understand why but that wasn’t necessarily my intention. I mean it is hard not to humanize these convicted killers. You see what they chose and then you realize yes, they were convicted of murder but yet they had jolly ranchers or a cup of coffee or a cheeseburger for their last meal and you realize that they are human and there is an initial reaction to feel some sort of sympathy or empathy. All of a sudden someone who was once considered to be a monster at one point in their life, is now in their final moments eating their final meal and they are quite
vulnerable. I think the viewer needs to look past that though. The series is photographed in much the same way a correctional facility operates; documentation, order, very sterile. It is extremely fascinating to see their choice and by documenting that I am creating a body of work that participates in this process but in a visual way rather than through paper work. I think the real sticking point with this series is that because the ritual of a last meal, this is the ultimate last choice one is making in their life before their execution. That being said the focus of the project was more about the facts. In the justice system and especially in death row cases, the process can be very skewed. Don’t get me wrong, many convicted killers were guilty without a doubt and arguably got what they deserved. But, think about the innocence project. DNA evidence released countless convicted “killers”, many who were on death row. Think about all of those people who were executed before the innocence project started. That’s not justice. Also, many of people on death row are uneducated and/or poor. There are plenty of other people who are more educated and have more access to better representation, who have committed comparable crimes or even worse crimes, but are not on death row. Also, from studies I have read, death penalty convictions are much greater in cases when a VICTIM is Caucasian. This means if a white person was murdered the percentage of those cases resulting in the death penalty for the perpetrator is more likely than if it was a black/minority person who was murdered. So how do we value a life? Does a poor, uneducated life have less value? Is a black life less important than a white life? Is any life more or less important than one another? This is a very complex issue, so I want to be clear; I by no means condone any sort of killing or believe someone who has committed an awful act like this should not be punished greatly. I am opening the door to question how the death penalty really serves society. The Last Meals Project is not for
or against the death penalty. It is a project that uses the medium of photography to raise questions about the death penalty and gets the viewer to think about it. Because of all of these inconsistencies and various facts, the main focus that I found most interesting and wanted to zone in on is that the last meal is something that cannot be argued, cannot be distorted or skewed. The last meal is unarguably honest and true. 24hrs: Going along with the questions before, I see that you are a photographer, primarily. Do you think that letting us see pictures of the prisoners, and their meals, helps you to achieve your goal? Why not a cookbook, let's say? Thoughts? JK: I do think I achieved my goal. I don’t feel the series would have the same impact presenting the meal with out the face. The two work together to create a thought-provoking body of work that sparks interest and asks a lot of questions. A cookbook could be interesting but would be a different sort of project. I think there was some sort of cooking show that asked what the last meal of different chefs would be. I just wonder and maybe argue, is it that interesting to say what your last meal would/could be? Or is it more interesting to say that this is the last meal this person chose before they were executed. The person is dead now and this is what he/she ate. I think there is much more impact in that. I mean I used to hate mushrooms 10 years ago but now maybe that would be on my list for a last meal. When someone is executed and his/her last meal is selected that choice will be forever the most important meal for that individual for eternity. That’s quite powerful. 24hrs: What do you think each man or woman’s food choice says about them? Have you ever gotten the chance to meet death row inmates and discuss this with them? JK: I think there is something very unique that food says about a person. Whether it is as typical as a steak or a burger or as strange as dill pickles or an un-pitted olive, each choice is completely unique to the individual that chose it. The viewer is presented with authentic insight into the personal life of this convicted killer. I have never met with a death row inmate but I have read many books about this, mostly written by death row lawyers. Almost all of them say that the inmates are not what most expect from someone convicted of murder. I have a deep interest in death row and it would be amazing to have access inside a facility and spend let’s say a year on the inside and document what goes on. From the boring mundane day-to-day stuff all the way up to the last meal and execution, I feel all of it would all be equally remarkable. 24hrs: How will your book be different from the website? JK: I plan on continuing and expanding on this project. I find it very interesting though, I have had a lot of interest for this project abroad; Singapore, Far East, Europe, Amnesty International UK and publishing companies in Germany. Yet here in the USA, not so much. I wonder what that means…..interesting to say the least. www.lastmealsproject.com
Shannon Wheeler playfully subverted the superhero genre when he started Too Much Coffee Man in the early 90s. Since then TMCM has been a comic strip, a magazine, and an opera (!). He recently put outGod Is Disappointed in You, his version of the Bible, and has just won the Eisner Award for Best Humor Publication, for a collection of his rejected New Yorker cartoons- I Thought You Would Be Funnier. Interview by Josh Medsker First of all, congratulations on winning the Eisner Award! What did you do after you found out? Stunned. It sounds crappy but I was more relieved that I didn’t lose than I was happy that I won. My kids were in the audience and if I had lost I would have had to spend the rest of the night acting like a good loser, explaining how it’s an honor just to be nominated (which it is) and how I’m still happy even though I lost. Once I got on stage emotions hit me. I was planning on thanking a couple people, saying something funny, and generally playing it cool. Instead, I choked up and started to cry. In my head I thought, “Christ, I’m going to be one of those assholes who cry when they get an award. I hate those people.” But there it is. Tell me about the origins of TMCM! It was a comic in the Daily Texan, right? Sort of. I was drawing a daily strip in the Texan- mostly Tooth and Justice and after that ended I tried other strips; the Life and Times, Interlude, etc. I drew Too Much Coffee Man as a mini-comic to promote a book collection of my daily strips (Children with Glue). Then I used TMCM to draw ads for a local bookstore. When do you really feel the change… going from doing a Xeroxed mini-comic to a full-fledged slick publication? How did you handle the switch? It was a long slow evolution. I photocopied minis but when they sold too fast I had a professional printer print them. I also worked with friends to publish an anthology (JAB) comic book and I was drawing a daily strip (and I
was working at a video store). It took me a year to draw the first issue. I drew it with 3 levels; the creator, the character and the reader. People thought I was doing 3 stories but I really thought of it as one story. For example, the third issue is the origin issue. I had the origin of the character and I had the origin of the idea. I haven’t seen the TMCM magazine around for a while. Are you still doing it? It was one of my faves. I stopped doing the magazine when I did the opera. I couldn’t split my attention that much. Also, magazine distributors were going out of business and it was getting tougher and tougher to make a profit. Tell me about the TMCM opera, and “The Refill”. How did that come about? An opera based on a comic, and one as quirky as yours, that is pretty unique! How was it received? I wanted to do an animation with Too Much Coffee Man and I thought doing a short to music would be cool. DS Crafts, A friend of my family writes operas and he’d wanted to do aTMCM opera but I’d always been dubious. I sent him a short love song to love (“I Love Loving Love”) and he wrote some music to it. It was perfect. He understood my humor and he pushed it farther. I felt like writing a full opera with him was a creative opportunity that I could not pass up. I was very excited to see that you still have your hands in the zine pot, with God is Disappointed in You. Is there a lot more coffee in your version of the Bible? I love hand crafting zines. I stapled over 20,000 Too Much Coffee Man mini comics. You’d think I’d be burnt out but I still love seeing a giant pile of unfinished books slowly shrink while watching the finished stack grow. The finished book is coming out from Top Shelf early next year. It has all 66 books of the bible and a lot more cartoons. What’s next on the horizon for you? Does it look like the animated show will ever come to fruition? I wouldn’t mind working on TMCM animation again. I’d really like to animate the opera...
www.tmcm.com
I met Aaron at his bookstore in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I thought I was meeting him at Autonomedia, an anarchist collective that prints and distributes books and pamphlets. So, having gotten lost (I thought), I popped into this bookstore to ask for directions. There was no one at the table that served as the register. Then I saw a guy come out from the back, so I asked “Can you help me?” Then, I recognized him from some old pictures in his zine, and said, “I think you are who I’m looking for.” He told me he hadn’t worked at Autonomedia for a while, and that this was the place. He smiled a little and we talked for a few minutes about a mutual friend, Rex, who he’d been neighbors with in Pensacola. “I’ve never met anyone like him,” Aaron said. I laughed in agreement. He asked me if I had ever heard about Warning fanzine, from Alaska. Heard about it? I had all the back issues and pored over them, and interviewed Frank Harlan (aka Bill Bored) for an AK punk history. I was way too nervous to tell Aaron all of this, him being of one my writing heroes and all. Anyway, he said how difficult it must have been to keep a scene going up there and I fully agreed. Then, I suppose (after he’d finished a cig) the interview proper started, even though with the master chronicler of minutiae, it seemed like it had started when I walked through the door. Near the end of our interview, I asked him if he was working on something new, and he said he “had something he was building up steam on.” On New York “I moved here seven years ago”, he said. “But lived here almost every summer for seven before that.” I commented on how wrong it felt to be busting out a notebook and pen and without missing a beat or changing his facial expression, he said “Wrong is fine.” If I can say anything from our meeting, it’s that he seemed like the calmest person I’ve ever seen. I asked him why he decided to root down in New York, and he said, “I think I was just looking for a place to live. I had a band, a club, in other places, but they weren’t sustainable. Is Alaska sustainable? Sure, if you want to keep going through generation after generation of people. It was depressing—young people getting jobs at Office Depot and moving in with their significant other instead of fulfilling their own potential. And plus, being 30 to 35 in New York isn’t old, you know?
Plus, there’s this perception that I write about everywhere I’ve been. I was in North Carolina for four years, and Florida for four years, and I never wrote about that. I wrote my most serious things about Berkeley while living in New York. In Pensacola, we ran a bookstore that was five times this big, right downtown (smiles), free coffee, good selection of stuff, we worked for free. Compared to what we made in a month there, we make in a week here. On Zines, Publishing (and Teaching) “People have this idea about me that I’m against mainstream publishing, but it’s less a moral or aesthetic issue than an economic one. Any publisher is going to take a book that costs eighty cents to produce and charge sixteen dollars for it. Which is fine, there are things that are worth paying that much for. But when something is cheap and weird looking, people will take a chance on it, even if they don’t know what it is. At this point, I can sell more of my magazines and books putting them out myself than any publisher can, and part of that is keeping them cheap. Very few authors are getting printed in quantities large enough that you can count on their books finding their way to stores like this second-hand, where they are cheap enough to take a chance on. To answer the other part of your question, yes, I would put on a shirt and slacks and teach, but to teach writing, not zine-making. But I find it a little bit depressing that people learn things, and then only become teachers. I think you should stake your own claim for a minute in between.” He was very excited when I told him about my students at the Fortune Society memoir class, and how much they liked his writing. “Yeah, my friends found that students in prisons are very receptive.” On Writing “There’s a lot of stuff that happens to me that’s unbelievable. But memoirs are your own life, and for the last decade, I’ve been mainly writing about other people. You want it to be true, but not necessarily factual. It veers into fantasy a lot of the time. Not fantastical, But saying what you would have liked to have said! It’s not only writers that need an editor! It’s like…either writing your own obituary or that of someone you know, trying to capture that while they are still alive. You can say things in writing that you can’t say out loud. The more you present yourself, the more no one will ever know you anyway. You present yourself as you wish you could be. If I’m at a party with you, I’m drunk, talking shit. But, if I have the time to go over this thing 500 times, hopefully I’ll be less hurtful, briefer, and more insightful. I think writing makes you a better person.”
5 Tips for Writing Powerful Short Memoir by Josh Medsker (from Literary Legs.com, Jun ‘11)
Writing memoirs is tricky. The fact that something interesting happened to you doesn’t mean that people will want to read it. That is where your craft comes in. I have found that these tips were especially helpful.
Find a subject with a lot of action When writing short memoirs, it’s important to focus in on a time in your life that was particularly eventful. This doesn’t necessarily mean action movie-style events. Make sure that there is a strong emotional pull, if not life-changing outside factors. No one wants to read about your Sunday afternoon musings on the meaning of life (unless you are Aaron Cometbus).
Be specific and give details Poet Michael McClure has said that what is the most personal is also the most universal. In order to pull off a successful piece of personal writing, you will have to get down and dirty. Give street names of where things happened, give praise and blame to those who deserve it, and name names. If you don’t feel comfortable using people’s real names in your work, you can change them in further drafts. It is helpful, however, to write that first version with the real names in. It will keep the emotions right on the surface for you. Notice how you feel as you write. If you get caught up in the writing and feel the emotional pull, your readers probably will too.
Keep in mind that there is a certain amount of fiction in memoir writing Now, I’m not talking about pulling a James Frey and making stuff up, but there is a certain amount of fictionalizing that goes on when you write memoirs. You aren’t going to remember the exact conversation you had with your mom when you joined the army, but with fiction tools like dialogue and suspense, you can recreate the same emotions.
Keep it short One of my writing teachers, poet Ellen Hagan, passed this idea on to me. She suggested keeping the first draft short. Three pages and no more. That way, you say what you need to say, and get out. The action of the story should take place within 48 hours.
Look for that turning point Another good tip Ellen gave me is to look for the emotional turning point. Write a definite beginning, middle, and end--with the turning point roughly two-thirds of the way through. In order to create this turning point, you will have to mine your memories of the event for the most powerful feelings, and see where things started to change for you. I wrote an emotionally draining piece about the sudden death of my cat, Louis. The teary phone call to my wife, and my admitting that he was gone was the turning point in the story. It will be uncomfortable for you, but if you don’t convey true emotions in the piece, don’t expect to move your readers.
WHAT THE REVIEWERS SAID ABOUT TWENTY-FOUR HOURS Didja know there's a new school of punk by the name of Pencore? Get your lit on!-
Punk Planet
Overall it was a pretty dull read-
Broken Pencil (Canada) A thoughtful literary zine... well put together - Clamor The interviews were quite good- Readers
Guide to the Underground Press
Winner of an Honorable Mention in the Zine
Yearbook Vol. 7, The Best Zine Writing of 2003
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